Bulwark Takes - Why Is Kristi Noem Carrying Around $3,000 In Cash?

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein discuss the bizarre theft of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's purse containing $3,000 cash, a passport, and a DHS badge. How did this happen with Secret Service protection around? And what's the real story behind carrying so much cash? Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s bag, including $3,000 in cash, is stolen from DC restaurant How Corey Lewandowski Became Kristi Noem’s Gatekeeper at DHS  The MAGA Trashiest Police Report in History

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And when you get a story about a cabinet secretary with a new face having her purse stolen with $3,000 of cash, I have no choice but to discuss the details with Sam Stein, our managing editor. The big headline here from CNN, Kristi Noem was having dinner Easter Sunday night, and her purse was stolen by a masked man. In the purse, notably, $3,000 cash, which has raised a lot of questions. There was more things in the purse, but that was the most notable. Blank checks also, a makeup bag, need the makeup bag, medication, apartment

case, a passport. It's kind of like a go bag. You never know when you gotta go. Why is the secretary of Homeland Security carrying a go bag? I did enjoy the joke. I didn't really appreciate the passport. We're sure the passport was in there?

I'm reading it right now from CNN.com. Do you carry your passport around? I don't carry my passport around. I do not. I'm not the secretary of Homeland Security, though. Someone online noted she's not the secretary of handbag security, so she's focused mostly on her homeland. Do you think that the secretary of Homeland Security has to present her passport when i mean she just went

to el salvador for a snuff film so it's possible that was not that it was fairly that was weeks ago uh does she i would assume she has to get her passport uh stamped even when you're at that level yeah she goes into el salvador so she's that may make sense and she's moving in and around a lot i don't know, but I wouldn't carry my passport around. To a restaurant? That's crazy. What do you make of this, Sam? It's kind of a funny story, but also

it does raise an eyebrow. Yeah, there's two eyebrows. Well, she can't raise any eyebrows, but for the rest of us... Stop it. Stop it. I'm sorry. You can't get a new face and then not expect people to notice notice it it's fine like look if i guys if in 20 years from now my hair is still brown i i give i give the tiktok youtuber you know the young smart ass

tiktok youtuber the right to make fun of the fact that it's not my natural hair it's just you know you gotta just have you that's not your natural hair now. It is. That's a wig. I'm au naturel. All right. This is what I actually think of this. Okay.

It's both eyebrow raising for a couple of reasons. But the primary one is she has Secret Service protection. How did someone get that close to steal her handbag? Maybe she was like up and out and, you know, in the bathroom and someone came and swiped the bag. But where was Secret Service? Like that's a legitimate concern. So that's the eyebar raising elements of it. And then there's the what is she doing with $3,000 of cash elements of it.

And then there's just a sort of like I kind of am sickly curious what restaurant. I kind of want to know where, where does she dine in, in DC? How did this happen? Like, I don't know. There's a bunch of like quirky. Let's dial in on the secret service because we've had a lot of secret service failures recently. Obviously the tax on now president Trump, then candidate Trump, you know, Carol Lanning of the post your neighbor has written a lot about this um you know and and there's been a lot of

issues with the secret service i i mean what it feels like this your only job you know it feels like you have one job if you're at a restaurant with a principal is to make sure that strangers a mouth i mean i guess it was a kind of a covid style mask not like a black mask but even that would be more suggestive of someone you should have your eye on like some guy walks into a restaurant with a mask on and be like what the hell is that guy doing it's not 2021 no and i know yeah so that whole thing is weird and yes this is yet another black mark for the secret service who who's had a number of bad incidents in the past couple of years. And Carol's been on top of all of it, written the book on it, literally.

So I'm assuming there's going to be some, you know, investigation to what went wrong. Our colleague Will Sommer called up Washington, D.C. police to see if they have an incident report on this. And they referred him to Secret Service. So I guess they're taking point on this but they fucked up yeah well okay now let's get to the bag but really who carries three thousand dollars i don't know tony soprano do you know anyone that carries three thousand i don't know of cash no no like a wad and you're just kind of no why does she have three thousand no i don't what do you do with three thousand dollars in Why do you have that in your bank?

I can't. I've been racking my brain. Like, could there be a reason that a cabinet secretary would want to have cash that a regular person wouldn't? We presume she has credit cards. Yeah, but I can't like. Maybe even Apple Pay. Who knows? I can't think of it.

I mean, there's some things that come to mind. Like you might not want a family member to see what you're paying money on or a foyer if it was a government card. I guess we could foyer for government payments. But what would be the other reason? Maybe she's going in and out of the country and she needs the cash. But credit cards work and she's on a government salary and they pay for everything. There's something really weird about this. Honestly, I'm not trying to be like suggestive or conspiratorial, though it comes off this way. But carrying that amount of cash when you're a top government official seems a little bit odd to me.

OK. If you're not going to be suggestive, I might. Oh, wow. You needed the green light. OK. Go ahead. There's another story about Kristi Noem recently and the person's role at the Department of Homeland Security. It was a Wall Street Journal earlier this week how Corey Lewandowski became Kristi Noem's gatekeeper

at DHS. Trump's former campaign chief is working as her de facto chief of staff, despite White House concerns about their relationship. So not not Tim's concerns, White House concerns about the relationship. There have been a lot of reporting that they had a, you know, kind of an affair of some kind that has been out there. You know, obviously they've been denials left and right just for just to be clear. But it's it's out there. Everyone has been reporting it. If you're not reported it, you've heard about it. It's out there everyone has been reporting it if you're not reported it you've heard about it it's in the ether and so you know i there have been some actual tangible on the record examples such as this uh my favorite one was probably like the third best thing i've

ever written for the bulwark uh which was before you came here uh the headline was the maga trashiest police report in history do you have i do you remember this? No. Okay. We can do this together. This is October 4th, 2021. Well, before your time at the board before we were a YouTube kind of endeavor when we, you know, use our fingers and I got tipped off, uh, to, uh, by a friend, uh, at that, at that point, I still had some Trump friends. Like they didn't really, they didn't like me, but they still talked to me. None of them talked to me anymore. Uh, and they didn't Trump friends. They didn't like me, but they still talked to me. None of them talk to me anymore.

And they didn't like Corey. And somebody was like, you might want to look at this police report that was just filed. And the police report was from an addiction awareness fundraiser at a Benihana in Las Vegas. It was in the private room of a Benihana. Corey was hammered. Again, this is all according to the police report uh so you know no wild accusations here cory was hammered at this addiction awareness fundraiser and started making um very inappropriate advances on a woman a married woman named trichelle odom i think i know the story remember go ahead yeah okay christy gn Kristi Noem was at the funerary. Corey had traveled there with Kristi Noem.

Okay. And, you know, there were one of the things that Ms. Odom said in the report was that Corey called Kristi Noem hot while they were discussing, while they were commenting. But one of the more interesting things from the report came after the dinner when Odom and her stepson were in like the picture line to go take a picture with Kristi Noem. And she said when they went to do the photo, Noem volunteered to her that she was sorry for Corey's behavior and that she was texting Corey to stop touching her during the dinner. Mrs. Odom said that was confusing for her stepson. That is intriguing, right? That Noam and Corey had that type of relationship.

She's texting him during a dinner being like, behave, behave. Now they're all, now he's the deputy chief of staff. Well, it's just, it's interesting. The shadow chief of staff, right? Yeah, what's interesting is that he's the deputy chief of staff. Well, it's just it's it's interesting. Yeah, it's what's interesting is that he's continued to stay in this kind of shadowy role where he's in and around her political orbit. It's been working on her pack, you know, follows her to D.C., seems to be in some ways indispensable for her. And yet there's not many fans of his inside the trump orbit and certainly if there were he would have a job at the white house um so yeah that the whole thing the whole relationship is fascinating i suppose fascinating yeah and so again who knows there

are millions i mean they're not a million reasons there are a handful of reasons why you might want three thousand dollars in cash among them might be just maybe you need to buy a dog to replace the to replace the one that you shot a gift or a dinner i remember i gotta buy a dog and i need cash i need cash to replace the dead dog um yeah i don't know i'm maybe handing out tips to the jailers when you're going to take strange more than one person has pointed out that the that some of these arrests that are being made are you know based on people having wads of cash uh so there's yeah well they mentioned several things had mentioned that in the brazil garcia case because i misunderstood it actually i should correct myself i forget i'm i'm doing too many of these youtube videos but i should correct myself in the past when i said that he had wads of cash and that wasn't true actually

the the they had the the anti you know the the mega folks had made it kind of seem like that in the in the report but if you read it closely it was no his he was wearing a hoodie that had pictures of wads so like all he had was like images of what images of what that was enough to you know be more evidence of sending him to el salvador whereas christy's just christy was carrying around good thing she didn't have a michael jordan hoodie on or something like that that would have been real do you think adrian ever had three three grand in cash on her no i don't know if christ Christopher would have allowed that to happen. Okay. Sam Stein, thank you so much.

We're going to keep a close eye on this story. There's a lot of office intrigue about this story for sure. The slacks are blowing up. So there will be more. Everybody subscribe to the feed. Where else are you going to get this? Come to the Bulwark. That's Sam Stein.

I'm Tim Miller. We'll see you soon.